The English government has announced that it intends to introduce a cap on the price of concert tickets sold on the secondary market, opening an official consultation to understand how to combat the problems linked to dynamic prices. The aim is to make the resale of tickets fairer and more transparent for buyers who often see tickets sold out in a few minutes only to find them immediately afterwards at greatly increased prices, on the secondary market and third-party sites.
To find a solution from today until 4 April the government has launched a public consultation to outline «a series of measures in the ticket resale market which aim to protect fans, improve access to live events and support growth of the UK's world-leading live events sector.” The secondary market has once again come under the spotlight after Oasis announced they would cancel 50,000 reunion tickets purchased from unofficial resellers. In the UK, touting brings in around £145 million a year.
Chris Bryant, Minister for Data Protection and Telecommunications explained to NME the government's objectives: «Now it is important to understand what actions to take. The first problem is how many tickets can be bought by a single person since it is clear that there are bots that use invented names to buy hundreds of them. How can we solve this thing? The second problem is defining the maximum price. Should it just be the face value of the ticket? This is what the Principality Stadium does for Welsh Rugby Union matches. Or should it be the face value plus taxes or plus 10-30 percent? This is the range we are consulting on. Third point: we are consulting on the desirability of a licensing system. We are open to opinions on the matter.”
The minister continued: «We are committed to tackling the appalling abuses already seen in the secondary ticket market. We said we would deal with this at the general election and we intend to do so, and that is the aim of our consultation. We are not asking ourselves whether to act or not, but how to act and what actions to take.”
«Regarding dynamic pricing, we are asking citizens for their opinions. We need to gather evidence on this. We may decide to take action, but it is not guaranteed. We are trying to act in a way that is proportionate to the problem.” And again: «The fundamental thing is the transparency and fairness of the system. If the system deliberately generates anxiety about buying now and the price of tickets increases accordingly, is it a fair system? We are asking people what we should do about it.”
The government thus hopes to have a new regulation for 2026: «The truth is that some things could happen already now: some organizations could make the face value of the tickets much clearer, rather than finding it out at the last minute with additional taxes and dynamic pricing. We said that we will legislate in this field. It's going to take primary legislation and that takes a little bit of time, but I hope we'll be able to do it within the next year.”
